Fishing School
Finding Fish [90/10]
Welcome to the Intermediate Level module of the Insider Club Curriculum!
These lessons will help you go from an Intermediate skill level all the way up to one of the more advanced anglers in your area as quickly as possible.
And please know that strategies you’ll see apply to you regardless if you’re fishing by foot, kayak, or boat.
Let’s get started with the most important lesson of all… Finding The Fish!
Note: Make sure to watch to the end because you’ll see some tricks for finding great spots from online maps even in areas with very murky water.
Related Links:
Very grateful for the knowledge and insights being taught here and shout out to the “Diamonds” brothers for the brain child that is now the Smart Fishing Spots app. It is such a comprehensive platform. Looking forward to graduating soon and putting my family on some fish on a more regular basis!
The app is a fantastic tool and it has helped me to locate so many good spots in the PCB area. However I can’t seem to get the app to show smart spots up in the bayous and creeks as it shows in the areas you demonstrated in the video around Tampa Bay. I know there are good areas up in the shallow water, docks, sea grass, moving water, holes, but for my area smart spots only shows the spots in the bays and just inside the mouth of bayous. Is this something that hasn’t been added yet for my area?
Are there any bayous or creeks in particular that you are interested in? I’ll use your feedback to prioritize the next zone we focus on.
great data, I am still unable to use the app since I am not yet in the US.. in the meantime, I will test here in BR.
Thanks for all the great info. I am new to being a member and this really helps me get the most out of the program. I can’t wait to visit my daughter in Jacksonville and use this to catch some fish!
great stuff Luke. TY. Tight Lines
Great stuff Luke 🙂
Luke, longtime member but moved to a new location. So we fish in Beaufort South Carolina.
Our challenge is while we can always find ambush points and there’s always plenty of current (especially with a 9 foot swing in the tide) is that we really never see any working birds. And bait is hard to find often.
So we’re usually fishing up in the marsh at the high tides and the points of the creeks where they dump into the river at the low tide. But all the places look the same. We don’t really find birds or bait as an additional clue.
so I guess it’s just doing a lot of homework in advance, marking the spots for ambush points and depth changes , looking for structure but with no additional bait clues just grind it out, spend no more than 15 minutes per spot until we can figure out where the fish are?
I recommend to keep exploring more waters because there has to be zones with a good amount of baitfish and bird activity. And in the fall season, that’s extremely important to find because the predators are on the move in between summer and winter zones, and they’ll be stopping along the way wherever there is lots to eat and structure for them to seek shelter from bigger predators.
Note: Birds will often feed most heavily at low tides since lots of food gets exposed when the water recedes, so that’s a great time to cover water to note spots that are likely to hold predator fish when the water rises.
Are the depths with the 1′ filter on at high, low or mid tide as the default?
They are an approximation of mid-tide levels… just to be used for finding depth changes. For navigational depths, make sure to use the Marine Chart layer which shows depths at mean low tides.
I’m dealing with the Gulf coast of Texas… Corpus Christi, Portland areas
A question… I have been playing around with the SFS map. I pulled up the 1ft contour lines for my area (Gulf Harbors – Pasco County). Are the depths in feet? If so, it seems a very inaccurate.
The depths are in feet, but they are not going to be as precise as the marine chart. For the 1 ft contour layer, the key is to use it for seeing depth changes. For the actual depth, it’s best to use the Marine Chart which consistently shows the depths at the mean low tidal phase.